


Laws of Gotham

by thatsrightdollface



Series: Gothamstuck/Gothamswap Stories [3]
Category: Batman - All Media Types, Hiveswap
Genre: Batman AU, Crossover, Domestic Fluff, Gen, Humanstuck, Lawyers, Tagora and MSPA Reader are roommates here
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-16
Updated: 2018-11-19
Packaged: 2019-08-24 13:57:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,614
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16641474
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thatsrightdollface/pseuds/thatsrightdollface
Summary: Tagora Gorjek made a killing taking on personal injury and property damage claims from good old horrible, Joker-wild Gotham City, but that didn’t mean he actually liked going there.  Oh, God no.





	1. What Do We Have Here?

**Author's Note:**

> Hi!! Thanks so much for reading this - I really hope you enjoy it. As a note, I refer to MSPA Reader as "MC" throughout this fic, and I have way too much fun imagining where everybody could be in a Batman AU. :P Sorry for anything I got wrong! Have a wonderful day~

Tagora Gorjek made a killing taking on personal injury and property damage claims from good old horrible, Joker-wild Gotham City, but that didn’t mean he actually liked _going_ there.  Oh, God no.  A person couldn’t touch anything around Gotham without a couple layers of gloves on, Tagora liked to say, and the smoggy air wreaked havoc on his skin.  You could just taste the muck of it wherever you went, clinging in a person’s hair and smelling faintly like rust and – maybe – old scrubbed-away blood.

And that…  That wasn’t even taking into account how easy it was to get caught up in some of Gotham’s particular _theatrics_.  Any misbehaving shadow could be the Batman, that elusive and very possibly-dangerous vigilante running around.  Any echoing laughter could belong to one of the Joker cultists, cracking a juggling club against an old brick wall and coming for somebody’s skull.  Tagora had been in a crowd that got fear-gassed once, too.  Yeah.  By the actual Scarecrow.  He’d barely scraped his way out of there alive, and the edges of his vision had never been the same since.  The uncanny that waited inside him, his subconscious mind stirring just where he couldn’t see…  Tagora wasn’t supposed to have gotten up close and personal with any of that.  The whole thing could’ve been very bad for business.

Really, Tagora imagined he was just lucky none of his clients had been able to pick him out of the shrieking-panic mob in any of the videos people had posted online, yet.  Tagora hadn’t been able to pick himself out, either, and his dearest friend MC had helped him watch through a ton of those videos after he was dragged back to himself.  They’d stared at clip after clip of the whole Scarecrow-related mess together, Tagora sipping coffee and occasionally forgetting his arm was in a sling.  Most of the skin from one of his legs had been shredded off on the pavement, too, and he would have to layer on far too much makeup to mask his bruises when he got back to work.  Otherwise, his clients were probably going to ask questions.

“You can, you know, stay home for a few extra days.  If you want,” MC had reminded him, when Tagora’d sniffed something vague and frustrated about that makeup issue.  MC was Tagora’s roommate, though he certainly didn’t need a roommate to help foot the bills anymore.  They were nice to have around, though, and there was no one else Tagora could watch vampire movies with in the middle of the night without feeling too _seen_.  Too real to be comfortable.

“Oh, I _could_ …  I suppose,” Tagora had grinned, though.  He’d been told he had a sniveling, slimy sort of smile – most of his law school classmates had agreed on that, actually – but MC said they liked it when he planned, or got genuinely excited about something.  “But I think we both know I won’t.  I have something going right now that could be really good for us.”

Tagora couldn’t remember when he’d started thinking of his money-making schemes as good for the _both_ of them, exactly.  It had just happened somewhere along the way, between when he’d bought MC a fancy coffee maker and pretended it was a hand-me-down and later on, when he held very still and let MC soak leftover fear toxin out of his burning eyes with a fluffy washcloth.

Having an actual steady alliance was a relatively new thing for Tagora.  MC knew that, though, and seemed to understand how much it mattered to him.  Their hands were really gentle, tilting Tagora’s chin up and dabbing the cloth gingerly against his worn-raw eyelids.

Tagora’d just been hurrying back to his hotel on an ordinary night after an ordinary open-and-shut kind of case when it happened…  When the whole street had been swallowed up in some crooked old professor’s nightmare poison world.  But this was the sort of nonsense Gotham got up to on _all sorts_ of ordinary nights.  Gotham was full of victims demanding some kind of voice – _any_ kind of voice – and it made a whole ton of sense why.  Tagora might’ve even been willing to pay something like his own prices for a little justice, if he’d grown up in a place like Gotham.  But he hadn’t, so he wasn’t the one paying, was he?

Tagora would just sweep into Gotham every now and then, slick as he could, and get a job done.  The city didn’t have to be anything more to him than that.  Gotham was half-crumbled gargoyles and squirming Scarecrow visions and gaudy bars…  Bars where Tagora’d sometimes grab a drink with a couple other lawyers before he managed to fake an excuse to get back home, or texted “SOS” to MC from the bathroom.  Gotham was reliable cash and the view of that glittery haze of a skyline through the window of a train.

Of course, Gotham was also – weirdly, stupidly – where one of Tagora’s cleverest law school study group members had ended up working fulltime.  Tyzias Entykk could’ve had such a bright future ahead of her, but Tagora shook his head knowingly when he thought about what she was up to now.  Crusading against the kind of crime bosses that had splashed acid in Harvey Dent’s face.  Taking on run-down charity cases that kept her up all night, face propped in her hands and the Bat Signal lighting up her tiny apartment like a second, relentless moon.

When Tagora saw he had a bunch of missed calls from a Gotham phone number that morning, he never thought they could’ve been about Tyzias.  Not at first.  If he’d realized, Tagora might not have finished up his morning routine as usual, tying back his hair, polishing his cheekbones with just a hint of glitter.  If he’d realized, Tagora might’ve checked his messages a little sooner, before he was waiting for MC to get out of the shower so they could have breakfast together quickly, quickly, before rushing back out into the world.

All of the messages were from Tyzias’s girlfriend, and all of them were about why Tagora should drop everything and hurry to Gotham right away.  They couldn’t pay as much as he was used to, but Tyzias needed his silver tongue now.  Tyzias needed a lawyer the Gotham underworld didn’t already have swinging on puppet strings.  Her girlfriend, Stelsa, thought maybe that lawyer should be someone she knew.  She’d pulled Tagora’s work number off a billboard, even knowing his personal one was probably still in Tyzias’s phone somewhere under a codename like “Ferret Boy” or “Nosy Asshole.”  Tagora _had_ kept ferrets since he was a kid, Stelsa reminded him, and they could both agree he sometimes pried around where he didn’t exactly belong.

It was surreal, listening through all that in Stelsa’s breathless monologue.  Tagora flipped over one of MC’s fried eggs as he listened, shifting the phone to his other ear.  He could feel the angry smile twisting up his face, and he muttered at himself to smooth everything out.  Grab for whatever sort of poker face he could.

It wasn’t clear what exactly Tyzias’s crime was, at first.  Why she would need a lawyer like Tagora, who she’d argued with all throughout school and who she _knew_ never came cheap.  He was a personal injury lawyer now, but he’d done defense before.  Back in the day, when he’d still managed to be “pretty slimy…”  But maybe a little less so than he’d gotten now.  Those were Tyzias’s words, obviously, recited a little apologetically by Stelsa.  Honestly, it sounded sort of like she was about to cry.  Stelsa must’ve been terrified for her girlfriend, after all.  She must’ve had so much to say, she wasn’t sure how to get everything out right.

Of course, Stelsa only ever _hinted_ at anything like a case, like a wrongdoing, for so many messages.  She beat around the bush and hummed half-explanations and got angry with Tagora for not picking up the phone.

“Just get to it, then,” Tagora murmured.  He slid MC’s eggs onto a plate and sprinkled some pepper over them absently.  “I can’t help if I don’t know what you’re actually up against.”

That was around when Tagora gave up on Stelsa’s hints and sighs and messages and just checked Gotham’s news sites on his phone.

If he hadn’t known any better, Tagora might’ve thought plenty of those headlines were just Tyzias in part of a Batwoman cosplay.  Tyzias posing on a rooftop, trying to hold the pieces of a splintered mask together.  Tyzias caught by a traffic camera after she’d taken a Joker cultist’s ax right in the plastic-y bat face.  It could’ve been some sort of action-shot cosplay, or what have you…  Tagora didn’t know.  But he trusted the desperate wheedling in Stelsa’s voice, by now.  He knew her stubborn disapproval of Gotham’s Batman, and her resolute, protective love for Tyzias despite everything they couldn’t understand about each other.  Of course Tagora could tell what was going on in that picture, even before he skimmed through a couple articles.

It barely even surprised him that Tyzias had successfully apprehended the Joker cultist in question _and_ a gang of her friends before the GCPD turned up to arrest her later that night.  At her apartment, once Gotham’s bats had apparently missed clearing one of the camera feeds.

Tagora knew perfectly well why Stelsa wanted him on a train to Gotham right that very second, carrying his toast as he ran out the door like one of their old classmate Tegiri’s anime characters.  Nobody wanted Tyzias in Arkham, or Blackgate, or what have you.  Even Tagora was sure he’d never wanted that.

But then…  Tagora _also_ knew why he was going to have to decline Stelsa’s job offer.  Gotham was Gotham, after all, and this would be getting both Tagora and MC in a lot deeper than he’d ever meant to go.


	2. Make Your Case

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi again~~~ I had a lot of fun writing this -- I hope it's fun to read, too. :) Batman AU.....!!
> 
> Have a great day!!

Tagora had finished fancying up two plates and cups of coffee by the time MC slumped into the kitchen.  They were dressed for the outside world, already, but still rubbing sleep out of their eyes.  One of Tagora’s frost-white ferrets was clinging to MC’s shoulder, too – hitching a ride.  MC said they didn’t mind the little guys…  Said they were scrappy and funny, and it wasn’t really the worst thing when they dashed off with your stuff to hide it away in secret treasure troves throughout the house.  Tagora liked knowing he could trust MC to give his ferrets some time out of their enclosures throughout the day, to be honest.  If _he’d_ had to rattle around a tiered glass box for hours and hours with no breaks, it really wouldn’t have mattered how many toys were in there with him, either.

Who liked being trapped?  After that deal with the Scarecrow on the streets of Gotham, with the fear toxin and the mob, Tagora’s manicured fingertips had been mangled raw.  He’d cracked a couple nails right down the middle, even, which he’d had to hide as professionally as possible with no-nonsense Band-Aids.  It was hard to remember _everything_ that had happened when the fear came for him, but Tagora was fairly sure he’d been clawing at one of the brick buildings to “Get Out” before it smothered him.  Before he got trampled, you know.  He still dreamt about the shrieking and the relentless crush of movement all around, sometimes.

Tagora thought for just a second about Tyzias Entykk, under lockdown and waiting for a trial.  Gotham’s Batman broke plenty of laws to get his job done, and if _she’d_ broken them right along with him…  Hm.

Tagora’s ferrets had climbing trees and interesting tunnels to explore and beds to curl up in in both Tagora’s and MC’s bedrooms.  They wore tiny embroidered harnesses when they went for walks and played outside.  Just right now, MC was stroking one of them behind the ear, gently, and thanking Tagora for making breakfast.  Once upon a time Tagora might’ve asked them to chip in for the ingredients, but he’d long since lost count of the times MC had bought him dinner or new socks or…  You know.  Picked him up from the airport in the middle of the night, or listened to him rant about how stupidly attractive Galekh Xigisi was for hours without asking him to shut up or teasing him amicably (the way _Galekh_ might have) or anything.  They’d been friends long enough, by now.

And.  Well.  The Batman _had_ dragged Scarecrow off the streets, that day, Tagora knew.  Way back when, when it had seemed like he might never come home to MC and the ferrets and all the piles and piles of work he had left to do at all.  MC had watched the Batman do some of that on the news, actually, and they said they’d barely been able to breathe.  The Batman had administered his antidote to all that fear toxin, and he had sealed up some strangers’ nearly-dire wounds, even.  He and his weird little army had wrestled the street back to something a bit less bloody, going places the cops couldn’t dare to go and speaking softly to all those frantic people.  Speaking softly to Tagora, too, he thought, though it was hard to be sure.  Had it been somebody in a Batwoman getup trying to reach through his panic, making sure he gulped down enough of the Batman’s antidote?  Had it been _Tyzias_?  It was hard enough for Tagora to imagine Tyzias Entykk being cordial with him, though, nevermind so reassuring and warm.

He had a vague, dripping-watercolor memory of one of Gotham’s bats tucking something – his wallet? – back into his coat pocket and calling him “Mr. Gorjek.”

That could’ve been anyone.

Tagora knew just how to fix up MC’s coffee, by now, and he smirked a little watching them close their eyes and take a long sip.  They sat together for a while, running through what sort of day lay ahead waiting for each of them.  Tagora wasn’t going to mention Stelsa, at first – wasn’t going to mention Tyzias, or the fact that he’d put his work phone on silent even though he never, _ever_ did that.  But MC noticed that the work phone wasn’t buzzing, because of course they did.  Tagora’s work phone generally buzzed a _lot_.  MC pointed at the work phone and asked what was wrong, and obviously Tagora _could_ have just waited until he got in to work and then fidgeted around his office like a trapped thing – like one of his ferrets when they hadn’t gotten a chance to run around the living room for a while…  But he didn’t.  The genuine concern and camaraderie on MC’s face melted him like butter in the microwave, like cocoa powder in milk.  Not that he’d want anybody to _know_ that.

Tagora explained all the really bad career decisions he couldn’t possibly make, and some of the dangers he couldn’t stand to put MC in, and just how annoyed he generally was by Tyzias Entykk.  He explained how Stelsa had kept insulting him on the phone, and played a couple messages so MC could get the gist of it, too.  He tried to keep the conversation light and airy – tried not to show the deep vein of frustration that’d gotten tapped into, here, like a dark river running underground.  But MC knew.  Tagora was confident most people in a court room wouldn’t have been able to tell – Tyzias probably wouldn’t have been able to tell, either! – but if anyone was going to know it would’ve had to be MC.

They clicked Tagora’s work phone back on and said, “I know you’d never do this, but…  If you _did_ want to meet with Stelsa and learn more about the situation, I don’t think there’d be anything wrong with that.  I’d be with you.”

“It’s an _awful decision_ ,” Tagora scolded.  He didn’t generally like to scold MC, if he could help it – but there the scolding was, soaked into his voice, sharp and drawling and so, so true.

“I trust you,” MC said, anyway.  Tagora felt so vulnerable and strange when they said things like that…  And they knew it, too, so they didn’t keep going down that particular train of thought.  _“I trust you”_ was enough.

If Tagora went someplace dangerous, MC wouldn’t have wanted him to go alone if he didn’t have to.

If Tagora felt deep inside that it would be _right_ to take a case for someone who might’ve been the actual Batwoman – despite all his goals, despite everything they’d worked for – MC would have his back.

Tagora trusted that, too, as bizarre as it sounded.  He wasn’t ready to commit to anything solid, yet, but later on…  When he called Stelsa back and grumbled something about arranging a meeting time _just to hear her side of the story_ – and oh, sure, fine, he’d try whatever hip café she liked – he saw MC was smiling softly at him from over whatever they were doing on their phone.

And that was how Tagora had ended up on the train heading back in to Gotham, now.  He was wearing a slick suit and new, crisply shined shoes, and he was glowering at a text Galekh Xigisi had just sent him, trying to think of how to respond.  That ridiculous academic – naïve and chatty and always scribbling away in those notebooks of his.  What did he even want Tagora to say to a picture of himself tending his dad’s goats on a trip out to his family’s country house?  The guy was ridiculously rich – like, _“sends Tagora-absurdly-expensive-presents-out-of-the-blue-flustering-him-at-work”_ rich – but he had mud splattered on his rainboots and his smile was shy and sweet, eyes glinting knowingly behind his glasses.  He probably knew Tagora would take one look at that brisk, mucky morning in the country and shudder, even while admiring the tasteful manor just up the hill from the goat pin and the apple orchard and that tree where he knew Galekh liked to sit working on his latest manuscripts.

Tagora saved the picture to his phone, though he snapped at himself for doing it and glanced around discreetly to make sure Galekh wasn’t just behind him and grinning, right then.  That wouldn’t have been Galekh’s style, exactly, though he _had_ gotten a tattoo Tagora could’ve sworn was specifically intended to piss him off, that one time.  You can never be too careful with a guy like that.

The world outside the train window shifted from polished Metropolis to the suburbs, from a few rolling tree-scattered hills to the smoky, creaking edges of Gotham itself.  Tagora read the news on his phone and replied to e-mails – he dutifully plugged in headphones to watch a video MC had sent him and hunted around for a video of his own to send back.  He climbed out of the train station and into a dirty rain, snapping his umbrella open and glancing up at the gargoyles and cracked clock faces staring from their rotten towers above.  There it all was – Joker gang graffiti, smoggy airships, lots of old 1920s-ish hats and hidden weapons and rebellious Batman-oriented homemade t-shirts.  Gotham.  Back to Gotham, and this time Tagora didn’t even have a guaranteed paycheck.

(Though, who knows, really – maybe representing a Bat in court could be spun in a way that really appealed to Tagora’s usual client base.  Who stood up for the little people of Gotham when the authorities failed them, after all?  Who risked their necks daily to keep the Joker from tossing somebody’s insides around like sizzling chemical-stained confetti…  The Bats, or whatever corrupt mayor was running around Gotham just then?  Tagora Gorjek, a champion of the misrepresented – a champion of Gotham’s underdog…  It had a kind of ring to it, honestly.

Not that Tagora was going to be representing a Bat in court anytime soon, mind you.  He was meeting up with an old classmate’s girlfriend to have coffee.  That’s all.  He was prepared to listen to her story, and he was probably going to pick up some interesting new coffee beans for MC to try.)

And if he thought he might’ve seen the shadow of something – the Batman, maybe – slipping like liquid through hidden places along the rooftops…

– (Watching.  Always watching, like Gotham was full of watching things.  Through gory stained-glass designs, past sewer grates, from the edges of Tagora’s own eyes where the fear toxin had left its awful, lingering stains) –

… If he wondered if maybe there was a larger plan at work, here, and some _other_ _reason_ Tyzias wanted him tangled up in whatever sort of nasty, altruistic business she was making for herself…  Well, now.

Tagora was going to keep on alert, of course.  MC trusted him to gather up whatever information he could, here, and figure out how to make the best of this.  How to make a little cash, maybe; how to come out on top, or at least squirm away before things got rough.  Tagora had played Gotham to his advantage, before, after all, one liability claim at a time.  Maybe he could play this, too.  Maybe it would _be right_ , somehow, to play this, too…  And if not – Tagora’d wasted the money on a ticket out here.  That’s all.

Maybe Tagora sneered up at the shifting shadows that could have been the Batman.  Maybe he wrinkled up his nose a little, and flicked his hair over his shoulder.  Stelsa would be waiting by now, probably, with her arms wrapped around herself and a drink growing cold on the table in front of her.  Tagora had to get to work.


End file.
